Ministers set to appear before Carillion inquiry

The business and work and pensions secretaries are both set to front the MPs running an inquiry into Carillion’s collapse next week.

Greg Clark (pictured) and Esther McVey have been called to appear in front of the inquiry, which is being run by their departments’ select committees, next Wednesday.

Clark has already been forced to defend the goverment’s failure to protect the supply chain in the wake of Carillion’s collapse after he came under fire from MPs the week after the construction conglomerate went bust.

While refusing to be drawn on past policy decisions, he conceded there were a number of lessons to be learnt from the construction conglomerate’s failure.

Speaking in parliament two weeks after the firm went bust, Clarke said: “Retentions and project bank accounts have been the subject, in response to those and other concerns, of a consultation on specific measures, which closed very recently. That came out of the recommendations that were made.

“The lessons and the scrutiny of what went wrong in Carillion, both on the part of its directors and its scrutineers, and in the oversight that took place across the whole of the public sector in terms of contracting, need to be looked at and will be looked at, including by select committees of this house. Whatever actions are required from that, we will take.”

Three partners from PwC, which is acting as liquidator for the failed contractor, are also due to appear next week.

PwC, who also acted as an advisor to Carillion, is the last of the Big Four accounting firms to be hauled in front of the inquiry, with EY, KPMG and Deloitte all being summoned over the past month.